The All-Time Best Food Processor Solved a Very Annoying Problem
In my opinion, the only food processor worth buying is a food processor you’ll actually want to use. Yes, these appliances can do all the dicing, chopping, mincing, kneading and puréeing that you want them to do, but they can also take up a ton of space, be somewhat tedious to operate, and get quite fiddly to clean. When I set out to find the best food processor, I wanted one that, in addition to performing the required jobs very well, was, to be blunt, not annoying.
Our top picks
- The best food processor overall: Breville Sous Chef 9 or 16
- A beloved runner-up: Cuisinart Custom 14-Cup Food Processor
Whether your cabinets can comfortably hold one or not, a food processor is an essential kitchen appliance for home cooks. It can do a lot of things a stand mixer or blender can and then some. It will serve as a grinder, a grater, a slicer, and will readily assist you in making soups, pestos, salsas, nut butters, pizza dough, or pie crusts. People love food processors because they vastly cut down on prep time and labor, especially for tasks like chopping vegetables and kneading dough.
We’ve been testing and retesting food processors for years, evaluating them on their performance in our Test Kitchen and in our own homes. Below you’ll find more on the top pick, as well as details on food processors that didn’t chop or dice as well.
New in this update: The long-time top pick here has sadly been discontinued, so two new winners headline the list. The standings have also been revised to include a runner-up recommendation from Cuisinart.
The best food processor(s): Breville Sous Chef, 9 or 16
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Exceptionally functional design
- Seamless, easy-to-use design
- Powerful
- Extra-wide feed chute
- Stable
Cons:
- Particularly heavy
- Plastic components not recommended for dishwasher
- I miss the discontinued 12 cup model :/
Specs
Dimensions: 9 cup: 9"D x 7.7"W x 15.5"H 16 cup: 9.2"D x 11.3"W x 17.7"H
Weight: 9 cup: 14 lbs, 16 cup: 30 lbs
Power: 9 cup: 625 16 cup: 1450 watts
Attachments: Stainless-steel spindle. micro-serrated S-blade, adjustable slicer with 24 settings, reversible shredder, dough blade
Warranty: 1-year limited
What we love: Breville's Sous Chef is powerful, it’s consistent, and above all, it’s extremely well-designed. All the components lock into place with ease. Of all the food processors I've tested, this one is by far the easiest and most intuitive to operate.
The work bowl is designed like a large measuring cup, with volumetric measurements on the sides of the bowl. Because the spindle that rotates the blades isn’t attached directly to the base—as is the case with many Cuisinart models—there’s no hole in the middle of the work bowl. This means you can fill it with ingredients while detached from the base, which is nice, especially if you want to avoid spilling ingredients on the electrical components of the machine.
The Sous Chef also has one of the widest feed tubes of the machines I’ve tested, which is helpful for bulky ingredients like large carrots or potatoes. However, sometimes you don’t need that big of an opening, which is why the pusher has a nesting doll design of smaller openings to help hold ingredients in place and minimize potential splash back.
Workhorse is a product tester cliché that I try my best to avoid, but it really does apply here. The Breville, at all sizes, does a great job circulating ingredients as it works, providing a consistent rough to fine chop. They have excelled at each test we put them through. Anytime I've use one of their machines, I end up with exceptionally creamy hummus, near-instant grated cheese, uniform diced onions, and keenly composed pie crust. The stainless-steel chopping blade is exceptionally sharp, and the slicing disc has adjustable width settings that provide you with the same versatility as a high-end mandoline. It’s also one of the quietest machines my team has tested.
Breville offers an extensive range of food processor attachments, but the basics include a slicing blade, a dough blade, a slicing disc, and a grating disc. I wouldn’t suggest springing for the additional accoutrements unless you’ve already integrated the food processor into your cooking routine. But the nice thing about Breville is that many of the brand’s machines include storage vessels for the attachments, which is better than having them float around in your kitchen junk drawer.
All in all, I've yet to encounter a food processor as thoughtfully designed as the Breville Sous Chef, and I think it’s a quality kitchen tool well worth the premium price.
What we’d leave: I say this with a heavy heart, but the 12-cup Breville Sous Chef, which I and other testers felt was a real goldilocks size, has been discontinued. Breville now only offers the 9 and 16 cup models. Depending on your needs and the size of the projects you're planning on executing with your food processor, you'll have to make a choice. If you're an occasional food processor user who only ever summons it from the bowels of the cabinet for an occasional pesto or dip, and you aren't much for big cooking projects, the 9-cup should suffice.
If you tend to cook for a crowd, or are a prolific baker who prefers to make pie crust in large batches, you'll want to opt for the larger capacity. Keep in mind though, that the 16 cup machine weighs a formidable 30 lbs. So unless you know how to lift with your knees, you'll probably want to find permanent counter space for this beast. Though I should note, that heaviness is a good thing for anchoring the food processor to the counter, lighter food processors can be quite unruly.
Also, because of the interlocking components, Breville suggests not soaking the work bowl and lid in water for a long time, and recommends only occasional dishwashing (as opposed to more regular hand washing). In general, even plastic appliances that do say they're dishwasher-safe wear down and degrade faster in the dishwasher. It's generally just a good idea to hand-wash plastic.
Check out our full review of the Breville Sous Chef here.
The extremely-excellent-in-nearly-every-way machine that annoys me for one specific reason: Cuisinart Custom 14-Cup Food Processor
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Powerful
- built to last
- veritable reputation for quality
- Technically dishwasher-safe (although we wouldn't encourage it)
Cons:
- notoriously fussy assembly
Specs
Dimensions: 11"L x 7.9"W x 14.8"H
Weight: 18 lbs
Power: 720 watts
Attachments: Large pusher and sleeve assembly, small feed tube and pusher,
slicing disc, and shredding disc
Warranty: 3 year limited on unit, 5 year for motor
What we love: For many people, a Cuisinart food processor is the food processor. After all, they were the brand that first introduced the appliance to American markets in 1973. That half a century's worth of brand reputation and good will from consumers is not without reason. It's a powerful machine, with Mensa-sharp blades that slash chunky vegetables with uncompromising uniformity. It'll puree bean dips smooth as K-beauty night creams, and mix pie crusts flaky enough to keep a family quiet and smiling through an election year Thanksgiving.
(I should say the Breville performs equally well, but I'm trying my best to give the Cuisinart its flowers because I tend to come down pretty hard on one particular aspect of using it, which I'll speak to in a sec.)
A little more about why these machines are great: They have a nice weighted base that grounds the machine to the counter. In Cuisinart's time producing these machines, the company has refined its attachment offerings to the most practical and functional. The components are all dishwasher-safe too (although I'd recommend hand-washing the work bowl, and other plastic components). The machines also last for decades. People pass them down for generations, and in the age of planned obsolescence it's a rare quality for small electrics.
The biggest leg up this machine might have over our winner is its size. 14 cups really just feels like an ideal size, and other staffers, including frequent food processor user Shilpa Uskokovic, agree.
What we’d leave: The components of Cuisinart food processors are very fussy to fit together. Put anybody in front of one of these food processors and ask them to assemble it—I've done this with many different colleagues over years—each time, I guarantee it'll be like watching a gibbon trying to solve a spatial reasoning puzzle. The assembly is just not intuitive. It feels like you're forcing pieces together, and I find any instructional markings to be inadequate.
"But people have been using them for decades, obviously it's not that big of a deal," you say. Sure, it is far from unusable. And while there is always a learning curve to using a new appliance, I have witnessed every single Test Kitchen editor awkwardly struggle to put one of these together at one point or another —and they're culinary professionals who use them regularly!
I get it, it is partially a safety mechanism, to make sure everything is exactly where it needs to be, but compared to the Breville, which is so seamless and intuitive and feels just as safe to use, I think it's time that Cuisinart catches up.
Still, if you're suspicious of Australian ingenuity for whatever reason (maybe the blades spin backwards), I still think that the Cuisinart Custom is a buy it for life kind of appliance. Just know that also means a lifetime of feeling like an idiot for a few seconds every time you're in the mood to make pesto.
How we tested the food processors
My colleagues and I put each machine through four different tests to evaluate different aspects of its performance. I combined these observations with long-term testing notes from members of our team, who live and work with different models on a regular basis.
Mirepoix
Any worthwhile food processor should be able to produce a consistent mirepoix. I blitzed onion, carrot, and celery with the standard chopping blade to see how close the results were to a dice, keeping an eye out for consistency.
Grating cheese
I then grated a block of cheddar cheese using the grating disc, observing how the machine shredded cheese and taking note of how much was left over.
Pie crust
I made pie crust, utilizing the dough blade if provided.
Hummus
I prepared a batch of hummus as well to evaluate how smooth each machine was capable of puréeing ingredients.
Design features
I also looked at other design features. Because food processors can potentially be dangerous (fast spinning blade and all that), they typically come with several safeguards to prevent any accidents, like a switch that will not turn on unless the lid is secured correctly. This is a good thing, but sometimes these safety mechanisms can make a machine more cumbersome to use. Simply put, the easier pieces clicked and locked into place, the better.
As for attachments, I was more concerned with practical attachments that I'd actually want to use rather than an embarrassment of redundant kitchen tools that take up even more storage space (nobody needs a regular food processor blade and a serrated blade, for instance). Extra points went to appliances that offered ways to store the accompanying attachments.
Other food processors we liked
Breville Paradice 9
The Paradice is Breville’s next-generation food processor; however, its performance is pretty indistinguishable from the Sous. The most defining difference between the Paradice and the older Sous model is the modular attachment caddy, which you can affix directly to the rest of the machine when not in use. It also comes with a food cubing attachment, which is interesting, but a little difficult to get working. It’s not the most necessary food processor function, either. The Paradice also has Breville+ integration, but the number of compatible recipes at the time of testing is too small for that to really be a selling point in our book. We still prefer the Sous, because it is more affordable and performs very similarly, but if the attachment caddy is worth the extra hundred bucks to you, than you might as well go for it.
Cuisinart Core Custom 13-Cup Food Processor
The Core Custom is an updated design of the brand’s original appliance that is compatible with components that can convert it into a juicer, a blender, and a mini food processor. For a majority of the tasks we put it through, it did a stellar job. The only hiccup came when we were chopping onions. This machine had some issues with large chunks of onion getting stuck under the blade, and by the time we dislodged them and got back to pulsing the machine, the onions had gone well past a rough chop and into a fine mince. For puréeing, shredding, and mincing, these machines are fantastic, but the results can be hit or miss with a rough chop. Also, as noted above, the components of a Cuisinart don’t lock into place quite as easily as they do with the Breville and often require a bit of fidgeting and adjusting each time you use it.
Cuisinart Pro Custom 11-Cup Food Processor
Cuisinart’s naming conventions for its line of food processors can be a bit confusing. This model isn’t more “pro” than the standard 14-Cup Cuisinart Custom—it is smaller and has a less powerful motor, so we aren’t really sure why they chose to call it that. However, it is still a great midsize food processor. The distinguishing feature is the compact chopping/kneading cover accessory, which is different from the typical feed chute. It has a simple hole in the top that makes it easy to continuously add in ingredients, perfect for making doughs and pie crusts. While we were putting this model through the paces in our Test Kitchen, a visiting food stylist passed by and raved about how much she loves the chopping/kneading cover. Do with that information what you will. Overall, it has the same slightly fussy build as other Cuisinarts, which is why we don’t consider it a winner, but it is still a high-quality appliance that will last you a long time.
Food processors we don’t recommend
At less than $150 at the time of writing, this Ninja is an affordable choice compared to others on the list, and it has novel design with an additional blade attached to the spindle. You might think this would make for more efficient chopping, but we found it to be just the opposite. The blades left big chunks of unsliced onion and pieces of cheese.
The Robot Coupe has a reputation as the brand of choice for professional kitchens, but we were put off by the Magimix in our testing. It was loud and violent while working, and it leaked flour into the base while we were processing pie dough. The Magimix also came with an extensive array of attachments without anything to organize them, which would be a headache for anybody with a small kitchen with limited storage space.
We appreciated the modular storage design for this model’s attachments, but found the base to be excessively bulky. Inconsistent results across our tests sealed the deal on this one.
This machine fell short in most of our tests. We had to pre-chop lots of the ingredients in order to fit them into the bowl at all, and the shredding discs fit poorly into the machine. It was unable to deliver a fine purée in the hummus test, leaving us with grainy results after five minutes of consistent processing.
The elemental is a less expensive alternative to Cuisinart’s flagship product, but after testing it, we found the general quality and build lacking, which is consistent with other reviews online. One quirk is that the blade continues to spin for a little while after a particular function ceases. This made it more difficult to control the results while pulsing or chopping.
This food processor was formerly the budget pick, however through a round of more vigorous retesting, the performance of the machine simply could not hold up when it came to processing tougher vegetables like carrots. The machine failed spectacularly at processing a mirepoix. It jammed repeatedly on the carrots, and even when we chopped the ingredients into smaller pieces (defeating the purpose of pulling out a food processor) it failed to produce a consistent chop.
This food processor did a poor job at the mirepoix test, and it wobbled quite a bit on the counter. Otherwise, it provided an average performance.
Everybody in the Test Kitchen found the snap on lid to be quite infuriating and fussy. Not only that, it produced a very inconsistent mirepoix, leaving large chunks of unblended vegetable intermixed with over-processed mush. We love Vitamix blenders, but we’ll pass on this attachment.
This gadget is suited for one job: Process large quantities of ingredients without stopping. It ejects processed ingredients out through the side rather than letting them pile up in the bowl. If you find yourself chopping lots of veggies or shredding lots of cheese and need something to do it fast and without stopping, you might appreciate the design of a continuous feed processor. But it’s not versatile. It’s smaller than all the other good food processors we tested, and it wasn’t able to finely purée things like hummus or pesto.
Do you need a food processor and a blender?
We’ve got bad news for the kitchen appliance collection condensers out there: Depending on what you’re cooking up at home, the answer is probably yes, you need both. While the two have some overlap in the area of, say, puréeing veggies, there are a lot of tasks a food processor can accomplish that a blender simply cannot. That’s because, with the right attachments, a food processor can effectively be a grater, chopper, or dough mixer—all things even the fanciest Vitamix blender can’t do. But there are also tasks that are best done in a blender, hence the need for both: In general, anything involving a lot of liquid getting whizzed until smooth is going to be better suited for a blender. Try to make a smoothie or hot soup in the bowl of a food processor and it will likely leak out the sides or escape from the lid, unless you take care to process it in multiple batches.
